Three head injuries: the Biblical account of the deaths of Sisera, Abimelech and Goliath

Three head injuries are described in the Bible: the death of Sisera at the hands of Jael, the skull fractures inflicted on Abimelech near the walls of Thebez, and the slaying of Goliath by David. The various attempts to understand the mechanisms of these head injuries are reviewed. We shall try to identify the site of the mortal blow on Sisera's head, to understand why Abimelech, still conscious, asked to die, and to clarify whether the Philistine giant from Gat was a rugged warrior or just an endocrinological cripple.     

The new killer drones: understanding the strategic implications of next‐generation unmanned combat aerial vehicles

The expansive use of armed unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), or ‘drones’, by the United States over the past decade has occurred within a particular strategic context characterized by irregular warfare operations in permissive environments. Ongoing strategic, ethical and moral debates regarding specific uses of drones may well be overtaken by a new generation of armed combat drones able to survive and operate in contested airspace with design elements such as stealth and greater levels of machine autonomy. These design parameters, and the likely strategic context within which second generation UCAVs will be deployed, suggest a fundamentally different set of missions from those performed by the current generation of drones. The most beneficial characteristic of current unmanned systems has been the ability to combine persistent surveillance with the delivery of small precision‐guided munitions. With a shift to more contested environments, this type of armed surveillance mission may become less practical and second generation UCAVs will instead focus on high intensity warfare operations. These new systems may have significant implications for deterrence, force doctrine and the conduct of warfare.     

Mind the Gaps: The Evolution of Regional Earnings Inequalities in the U.K., 1982–1997

In this paper we apply earnings equations for U.K. regions over 1982–1997. We find evidence of rapid convergence across regions regarding the determinants of individual wages (i.e., regional fixed-effects, gender gaps, and returns to education and experience). In contrast, data on average regional earnings point to a worsening of U.K. regional inequalities and a rise in the North-South gap. Education accounts for most of the discrepancy between aggregate divergence and disaggregated convergence. First, London gained because its workforce became relatively more educated over the period. Second, returns to education increased nationwide, which favored the most educated regions (i.e., London). Third, returns to education were initially lower in London but they (partially) caught up with the rest of the country. Had returns to education and their distribution across U.K. regions remained stable over the period, the U.K. North-South divide would have decreased.     

Regulating sex work in the EU: prostitute women and the new spaces of exclusion

Contemporary prostitution policy within the European Union has coalesced around the view that female prostitution is rarely voluntary, and often a consequence of sex trafficking. Responding, different nation-states have, however, adopted antithetical legal positions based on prohibition (Sweden), abolition (UK) or legalisation (Netherlands). Despite the apparently sharp differences between these positions, in this article we argue that there is now a shared preoccupation with repressing spaces of street prostitution. Noting the forms of exploitation that nonetheless adhere to many spaces of off-street work, we conclude that the state and law may intervene in sex work markets with the intention of tackling gendered injustice, but are perpetuating geographies of exception and abandonment.     

The many deaths of Manuel: Illness and fate in the Andes

In a village of the Equatorial Andes, a woman tells of the sudden death of her epileptic husband in disturbing circumstances. The study of the Manuel case through his wife's account shows the essential role of the aetiology of a morbid phenomenon in understanding its fatal outcome, as well as the subordination of nosology — shared by all the members of the collectivity — to a personal interpretation by the victim — or his spokesman. Finally, when the victim can no longer describe his illness following the loss of the vernacular language — in this case Quechua — the language of the body can fill this silence.     

In the front line: women,work and new spaces of labour politics in Poland

Pessimistic accounts of women's lives in post-communist Poland view women as powerless and passive victims of the transformation process. In contrast, this article argues that while political change and the restructuring of the economy have closed down some spaces of articulation and organisation, others have opened up. The article focuses on the way in which women in their spheres of work are shaping and actively resisting change through new organisations and individual and collective actions, which are in some ways a break with the past, but in other ways build on previous forms of activity. The work draws on qualitative research conducted over the last decade across Poland. This has coupled extensive interviews with women workers, national and regional trade union leaders, activists and feminists in a number of major Polish cities with reviews of Polish media and policy. We examine the economic and ideological context in which these new articulations are taking place, against the background of Poland's post-war communism and the rise of opposition movements. We look at the neoliberal restructuring of the economy and the implications for women within the labour market and in their domestic lives. In particular, we examine initiatives from below in workplace organisation, by focusing on new unions and new actions in the public sector, and the beginnings of organisation in the new areas of the economy such as supermarkets. Finally, we look at how women are articulating their interests beyond formal workplaces. We conclude that we should be optimistic about these new spaces of activism. While some are well established, others are embryonic but provide a strong foundation on which women can increase their participation in spaces that promote their varied interests.     

Bodies that sweat: the affective responses of young women in Wollongong,New South Wales,Australia

I argue that people's bodily sensations of sweat – smell, touch and sight – can provide insights to the relations between subjectivity and space. I draw on feminist ideas of the body as a physiological, psychological and sociological assemblage out of which spatially situated knowledge, ethics, subjectivities and social relations are forged. Empirical evidence is drawn from self-reflexive accounts of 21 young women living in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. Their narratives convey how sweat and sweatiness are integral to negotiating everyday life. First, participants' narratives illustrate the way the sweaty body-as-seen is bound up with gendered identities and self-disgust. Second, visceral experiences of the materialities of sweat and sweatiness often give rise to a heightened sense of bodily awareness, self and spatial marginalisation in the course of everyday lives. Third, participants' narratives highlight the tensions of spatial experience of sweat and sweatiness that simultaneously attract and repel bodies. Visceral experiences of sweat and sweatiness are central to better understanding of the spatiality of subjectivity.     

Sacred Cows of ‘Development’: the Ritual Incorporation of a Dairy Project in the Eastern Interior of Fiji (c.1980–1997)

In the same way that store-goods once became the symbolic cornerstone of certain millenarian movements, features of development projects in rural areas of contemporary Oceania may become mythically and ritually re-contextualised. This paper examines the ritual metamorphosis of a modernising dairy development scheme in the eastern interior of ‘Big Fiji’, a scheme which is also caught up in the collective processes of animal sacrifice and festive redistribution. The paper asks: what impact does ritual incorporation have upon the individualistic ethos and nucleated organisation of the project? A pattern commonly noticed by rural development workers in Fiji, but rarely acknowledged in the literature, is of an initial period of local activity and the promise of change which, in the longer term, slowly regresses to a slightly modified version of the old life.     

Louis Muskens: a leading figure in the history of Dutch and world epileptology

In the history of Dutch neurology Muskens has a place in his own right. Elderly neurologists still attest to the special fame of Muskens. He held a strong opinion on developing the specialty of neurology independent of psychiatry. At the same time he maintained that surgery of the nervous system also should be included in the realm of neurology. These views met with considerable opposition from colleagues and led to Muskens' isolation. To the field of epileptology he contributed both clinical and experimental neurological studies. With Donath he was the co-founder of the International League Against Epilepsy in 1909. In addition he held a lifelong interest in the pathophysiology of forced movements, which he studied both in human pathology and in experimental studies throughout the vertebrate series. This resulted in his magnum opus on the supravestibular system in 1935. His scientific work was well received in scientific societies all over Europe.     

The changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector in metropolitan and rural regions, 1976–1997

This paper documents the changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector over a 22‐year period (1976–1997). It does so by looking at the shifts in employment and differences in production worker wages across different levels of the rural/urban hierarchy—central cities, adjacent suburbs, medium and small cities and rural areas. The analysis demonstrates that the most dramatic shifts in manufacturing employment were from the central cities of large metropolitan regions to their suburbs. Paralleling trends in the United States, rural regions of Canada have increased their share of manufacturing employment. Rising rural employment shares were due to declining employment shares of small cities and, to a lesser degree, large urban regions. Increasing rural employment was particularly prominent in Quebec, where employment shifted away from the Montreal region. The changing fortunes of rural and urban areas were not the result of across‐the‐board shifts in manufacturing employment, but were the net outcome of differing locational patterns across industries. In contrast to the situation in the United States, wages in Canada do not consistently decline, moving down the rural/urban hierarchy from the largest cities to the most rural parts of the country. Only after controlling for the types of manufacturing industries found in rural and urban regions is it apparent that wages decline with the size of place .     

三通三绝: 清朝使用“纳林道”研究

通过对北京和台北两地档案机构所藏满汉文档案的研读,可以发现从18世纪末到19世纪30年代,清朝曾分三个阶段将北疆伊犁军队通过中亚“纳林道”换防至南疆喀什噶尔,而非以往学者认为的“两阶段说”,清朝趁机巡查布鲁特边界,达到“寓巡边与换防之中”的双重效果。文章就清朝在三个阶段分别使用这条道路的缘起、换防过程与演变,及其放弃原因与最终影响等进行了详细讨论,并考证出今台北故宫博物院藏《进呈伊犁由那林河草地至喀什噶尔图说》实为道光七年九月十四日伊犁将军德英阿《复奏伊犁至喀什噶尔草地路径由》之所附“绘图贴说”。     

The Determinants of Policy Introduction and Bill Adoption: Examining Minimum Wage Increases in the American States, 1997–2006

Faced with long intervals between federal minimum wage increases in recent years, state legislatures are increasingly likely to take action. Motivated by the relative dearth of empirical work on minimum wages in the American states, this article considered various explanations to determine which factors are associated with legislative efforts to pass wage increases. Taking seriously the view that disagreements over the effects of minimum wage increases enhances the influence of political factors, we drew on the policy adoption and diffusion literature to examine how internal determinants (political and economic variables) and regional diffusion pressures relate to both the introduction and adoption of minimum wage legislation in the American states in the years between the last two federal minimum wage increases (1997–2006). Employing negative binomial regression to analyze annual bill introductions, we found that a number of political variables are related to the consideration of minimum wage increases. However, using event history analysis to examine annual adoptions of minimum wage increases, we found few of the same variables matter. We concluded with a discussion of the empirical results within the context of the broader policy literature and cautioned future scholars to consider seriously whether political factors exert distinct influences at different stages of the policy process.